Last winter, Paul Petersen was awakened by a frantic call. "It was this kid calling from the Roxy," recalls Petersen, 48, an author and onetime child actor who played Jeff on "The Donna Reed Show" from 1958 through 1966. "He said he saw River Phoenix in one of the nightclub's bathroom stalls shooting heroin." Petersen, who for four years has been organizing support groups for former child stars and the pressure they face in an often indifferent Hollywood, sprang into action.

Here's some reading for the rest of the Fourth of July holiday weekend: Michael Demson's graphic history “Masks of Anarchy” (Verso: 128 pp., $16.95) traces a connection between Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem “The Mask of Anarchy,” written in 1819 as a response to the “Peterloo Massacre” in Manchester, England, and the life of Pauline Newman , a New York labor organizer of the early 1900s who once worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company . It's a fascinating book for all sorts of reasons, not least its portrayal of America's ongoing antipathy toward immigrants, which, of course, remains very much in the news.

Nestle, the world's largest food company, said it would do more to eradicate child labor and other worker violations in its Ivory Coast cocoa supply chain after an outside report pointed out a range of problems. The West African country provides 10% of Nestle's cocoa, which is used to make chocolate products such as Kit Kat candies, according to an investigation by the Fair Labor Assn. But the company's worker code is often flouted there, causing children to work under dangerous farm conditions instead of going to school, according to a Friday report from the association.

In a May 7 Op-Ed article , Richard Greenwald and Michael Hirsch exhort consumers to support the workers who make our clothes rather than the global apparel industry that exploits them with low wages and unsafe working conditions. Yet exactly how we should do this remains unclear. We need to be more specific about our moral responsibility so that the "labels we wear not be stitched in blood. " Should we be faulted for not buying clothes with the "Made in USA" label, for example?

This post has been updated. See below for details. Hershey Co. is being sued by an investor group accusing the giant confectionery brand of overlooking the African child labor allegedly used to produce the cocoa in its candy. The Louisiana Municipal Police Employees' Retirement System, a public pension fund and Hershey shareholder, filed suit this week against the company in Delaware Chancery Court. The suit, filed the day after Halloween's trick-or-treat gluttony, seeks to force Hershey to open its corporate records for investors, divulging which cocoa suppliers it uses.

Rana Jawad Asghar's commentary (Jan. 20) calls child labor in Pakistan an inevitable byproduct of poverty and argues that efforts to reduce child labor hurt the very people they seek to help. I disagree. The Clinton administration, along with other governments and organizations around the world, believes that abusive child labor can--and must--be eliminated. Last June, 174 nations adopted an International Labor Organization convention that calls for action to remove children from abusive child labor and put them in school.

In the first GOP debate featuring Newt Gingrich as the undisputed front-runner, rival Mitt Romney threw the first jab at the former House speaker, attempting to cast him as a career politician. Asked where he and Gingrich differed, Romney said, ”We could start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine minerals from the moon. I'm not in favor of spending that kind of money to do that.” He said he also disagrees with Gingrich's proposal to eliminate child labor laws so that poor kids can work to clean their schools.

The Times' Nov. 23 editorial, "Clueless candidates," which criticized Newt Gingrich for his call to loosen child labor laws and allow kids to work as janitors at their schools, prompted reader Mike Gallagher to write the following defense of the former House speaker's proposal: "I can only assume that the editor did not work as a child, unlike the children of most small-business owners. I've never known a working kid who didn't have time for homework, so long as there wasn't a long transportation requirement.

Your cover story on child labor, published five days after the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., was a chilling reminder that the world has long been a dangerous place for children ("A Stitch in Time?" by S.L. Bachman, Sept. 16). It was refreshing to hear from an author who suggests with such probing caution that simply eliminating child labor will not magically solve the problems of desperately poor children and families. Surely it is time to ask why children might find the back-breaking labor of sewing baseballs for six cents an hour preferable to staying at home.

Re "Child Labor on the Rise, UNICEF Says," Dec. 12: UNICEF's State of the World's Children 1997 report reminds us once again of the appalling conditions suffered by millions of children laboring around the world. What happens to children, especially girls, who are sold to labor contractors (ostensibly to work in factories) in order for their parents to afford food is unfit to print in a family newspaper. Although poverty is a primary cause of child labor, effective actions can be taken in the near term.

Los Angeles retailing giant Forever 21, known for selling trendy apparel to teens at low prices, was ordered by a federal judge to turn over supply chain documentation sought by the U.S. Department of Labor. The agency is investigating whether Forever 21 has shipped or sold items produced while violating minimum wage, overtime or child labor standards. Regulators first requested data from the chain in August via a subpoena - which the DOL says Forever 21 ignored. U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Morrow signed an order on March 7 requiring the retailer to comply.

LANSING, Mich. - I'm a 60-year-old lawyer and part-time law professor. Chanting slogans is not my preferred method of discourse. But on Tuesday, I was in the streets of Lansing marching and chanting myself hoarse. I make my living as a labor arbitrator. I've spent the last 20 years sitting as a neutral third party in disputes between employers and unions. It is an adversarial system, and discussions are often heated. But the system works because the parties meet as equals. It wouldn't work if either party were able to dominate.

This post has been updated. See below for details. Hershey Co. is being sued by an investor group accusing the giant confectionery brand of overlooking the African child labor allegedly used to produce the cocoa in its candy. The Louisiana Municipal Police Employees' Retirement System, a public pension fund and Hershey shareholder, filed suit this week against the company in Delaware Chancery Court. The suit, filed the day after Halloween's trick-or-treat gluttony, seeks to force Hershey to open its corporate records for investors, divulging which cocoa suppliers it uses.

Nestle, the world's largest food company, said it would do more to eradicate child labor and other worker violations in its Ivory Coast cocoa supply chain after an outside report pointed out a range of problems. The West African country provides 10% of Nestle's cocoa, which is used to make chocolate products such as Kit Kat candies, according to an investigation by the Fair Labor Assn. But the company's worker code is often flouted there, causing children to work under dangerous farm conditions instead of going to school, according to a Friday report from the association.

Re "A woman's touch," Opinion, May 11 Why is it such an amazing idea that "mom" might have some answers on running a business? Thousands of years of patriarchal dominion, with men's values of "assertiveness, competitiveness and even aggression," have given us endless wars, price-gouging, indecent pay inequalities, discrimination, concentration camps, slavery, child labor, class warfare and holocausts. If women had had a public voice these past few thousand years, what kind of world would we have?

In the first GOP debate featuring Newt Gingrich as the undisputed front-runner, rival Mitt Romney threw the first jab at the former House speaker, attempting to cast him as a career politician. Asked where he and Gingrich differed, Romney said, ”We could start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine minerals from the moon. I'm not in favor of spending that kind of money to do that.” He said he also disagrees with Gingrich's proposal to eliminate child labor laws so that poor kids can work to clean their schools.

Damaris was 13 years old when she began working in the broccoli and lettuce fields of Arizona. During peak season, she would often work 14 hours a day in 100-degree temperatures. For months on end she suffered frequent nosebleeds and nearly passed out on several occasions. Despite illness from exposure to dangerous pesticides, she kept on working. "It was very difficult," she told Human Rights Watch. "I just endured it."

"Teens' Efforts Give Soccer Balls the Boot," Dec. 23. The kids of Monroe High School are to be commended for their efforts on behalf of the child laborers of Pakistan and by extension, the world. The next step in their awakening would be, ideally, to find a way to feed and house the children who no longer have any value to their families or "employers." Instead of being sold to the companies that manufacture soccer balls, will these children now be sold into prostitution, maimed for begging or simply put out on the streets to fend for themselves?

Doubling down on a plan that stirred controversy about his views on child labor, leading Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich said Thursday that poor kids have no habit of earning money "unless it's illegal" and should be put to work in their schools. At a party fundraising dinner in the Des Moines suburbs, the former House speaker launched into a defense of his proposal to teach the nation's poorest children the connection between "showing up" and earning money — by putting them to work in their schools in the country's poorest neighborhoods.

The Times' Nov. 23 editorial, "Clueless candidates," which criticized Newt Gingrich for his call to loosen child labor laws and allow kids to work as janitors at their schools, prompted reader Mike Gallagher to write the following defense of the former House speaker's proposal: "I can only assume that the editor did not work as a child, unlike the children of most small-business owners. I've never known a working kid who didn't have time for homework, so long as there wasn't a long transportation requirement.